Toward the Sunrise (21 page)

“What about the mills?” he asked. “Do you think they’ll reopen the timber mills?”

“I don’t think they intend to stay for very long. After destroying the house, they plan to return the land to its natural state. They didn’t give any indication of wanting to stay in New Holland beyond that.”

“You said the house belongs to the grandfather, not this Quentin fellow. Perhaps we can take some legal cover there. Unless they have a written affidavit from the old man, I intend to stop it.”

Sophie shook her head. “They claimed to be demolishing the house on the grandfather’s orders. I’m not sure the village has a right to tell them what they can or can’t do on their own property.”

“Sophie, there won’t
be
a village if that house goes,” her father retorted.

“What if the Weather Bureau decides to build a climate observatory here?”

Her father sighed. “Not that again,” he said, and Sophie winced at the frustration in his voice.

In recent years, the Weather Bureau had begun building upgraded facilities along the coastlines and rivers of the eastern seaboard. The new stations were far more prestigious than the volunteer weather station Sophie manned on top of Dierenpark. Each observatory would have at least ten employees, and Sophie desperately wanted one of those jobs for herself.

Ever since hearing of the new climate observatories, Sophie had been steadily working to get one located in New Holland. She had already written to the Weather Bureau, asking how to nominate a prospective location. She began compiling a proposal that explained New Holland’s key location for transmitting news up and down the Hudson, and had started a petition to demonstrate the town’s support. She even used her modest savings to fund a geographical survey of the surrounding area to tout the location.

“We are on an important river.” Sophie hoped her voice didn’t sound too defensive. “We’ve got high altitude, which will make our signal lamps visible for miles in all directions. If I could only—”

“Sophie, they’ll never hire you,” her father said. “I can’t bear to see you longing for something that will never happen. It’s time to give this fool’s dream up.”

She swallowed hard. It hurt that even her own father didn’t believe in her abilities. Over the past few months, her work to collect signatures for the petition had made her something of a laughingstock in town. The postman pointed out two spelling errors in the petition she
drafted. Marten reminded her that she’d failed natural science in school and questioned why the government would trust her judgment.

No one believed in her. No one thought she should even try.

In a perfect world, she would already be a wife and a mother, but she’d failed three times to land that dream. She had to do
something
with the rest of her life, and over the past few months she had drafted and rewritten her proposal for an upgraded climate observatory at least a dozen times—but had yet to submit it. She didn’t know anything about how to write a proper business proposal and was groping blindly in the dark. Maybe in fifty years she would be an old spinster still fiddling with this outlandish proposal, but it was better than giving up, for nothing was more debilitating to the human soul than the loss of all hope.

Sophie didn’t have much to brag about in this world, but her ability to nurture the flame of hope in the face of despair had been her salvation all her life. And that meant she intended to fight to win a climate observatory for New Holland, just as she was going to fight for Dierenpark.

Look for
Until the Dawn
by Elizabeth Camden, available December 2015 at your favorite bookstore or by visiting www.bethanyhouse.com.

Elizabeth Camden is the author of seven historical novels and has won both the RITA Award and the Christy Award. With a master’s in history and a master’s in library science, she is a research librarian by day and scribbles away on her next novel by night. She lives with her husband in Florida. Learn more at
www.elizabethcamden.com
.

Books by Elizabeth Camden

The Lady of Bolton Hill

The Rose of Winslow Street

Against the Tide

Into the Whirlwind

With Every Breath

Beyond All Dreams

Toward the Sunrise: An
Until the Dawn
Novella

Until the Dawn

Resources:
bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook

Website:
www.bethanyhouse.com

Facebook:
Bethany House